Is Kingdom Hearts II a 10 Outta 10? - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: "Is Kingdom Hearts II a 10 Outta 10?"
May 12, 2026
Hosts: Greg Miller, Tim Gettys, Blessing Adeoye Jr., Andy Cortez

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Episode Overview

The crew embarks on a nostalgia-fueled deep dive into the May 2006 issue (#203) of Electronic Gaming Monthly (EGM), using it as a springboard to discuss their shared history with game magazines, the evolution of games media, and—most centrally—the big question: Was Kingdom Hearts II truly a 10 out of 10? More than a review, this episode is a time capsule, exploring the context of mid-2000s gaming through the lens of old magazines, hilarious ads, questionable industry trends, and the hype (and hindsight) surrounding legendary games.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Magazine Nostalgia & Personal Histories (06:31–13:12)

• Deep Love for Gaming Magazines:
  The group recounts their early bond with gaming culture via magazines (EGM, GamePro, Nintendo Power), describing them as their “Bibles” before the internet reshaped game coverage.
  • Tim Gettys: “I read every single word of every single issue forever. Because it was like I didn’t care if I was interested in the game—I was interested in this as a product.” (12:09)
• EGM’s Unique Voice & Review Format: The hosts appreciate EGM's multi-reviewer, conversational style, likening it to a precursor of modern gaming podcasts and their own style at Kinda Funny.

2. Flashback to 2006: The Gaming Landscape (16:52–26:56)

• EGM Issue 203 Context:
  The issue features previews of "Too Human" (which never became a trilogy), "Zelda’s 20th anniversary," impending Brain Age and New Super Mario Bros releases, and the aftermath of the PS2 era.
• The Price of Gaming:
  Subscription pricing ($5.99 per issue or $19.99/year) draws nostalgic laughs.
• Industry Trends:
  Odd predictions, failed hardware (HD DVD vs. Blu-ray), and studios’ ambitions are re-examined with hindsight.

3. Classic Editorials and Features

• Dan Shu’s Prophetic PSP/Handheld Editorial (22:28–24:32):

  • Notable Quote: Dan Shu (Editor-in-Chief, EGM)
    “Whoever makes the next major portable system should have a big screen like the PSP’s, touchscreen functionality like the DS, two analog sticks, two to four shoulder buttons... But hey, at least it’ll work on all the games I want to play.”
    • 20 years later: Dan Shu jokes about being gaming’s Nostradamus for predicting the Nintendo Switch, Steam Deck, etc. (23:54)

• Funny Letters Section (27:26–29:56):
  A letter from a “prisoner” worried about gaming-induced tears, and another decrying racism in online play, sparks both skepticism and acknowledgement that some conversations never change.

  • Letter Excerpt: “Online play can never be the next big revolution until this problem is fixed.” (29:55)

• Quarterman Rumor Rundown (56:32–57:13):
  Classic EGM rumor-mongering, mixing genuine leaks with fabrication, is fondly recalled—the roots of gaming’s internet rumor culture.

4. Advertisements: A Time Capsule

• Cringe/Funny Ads:
  • Tag and Axe body spray ads targeting dorky, lonely gamers ("for an encore, he’s gonna do your girl…") generate disbelief and humor. (44:10–45:21)
  • Early 2000s handheld and movie tie-in ads (“Tourist Trophy”, “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Legend”, “Oblivion”, “Dead or Alive Movie”) populate the mag.

5. Major Game Highlights from the Era

• Too Human’s Failed Promise (59:24–61:27):
  Starting as Microsoft’s answer to Mass Effect, this “sci-fi trilogy” fizzled due to delays and a disastrous lawsuit—a lesson in hype vs. reality.

  • Notable Quote: Dennis Dyack:
    “We’ve created something that was utterly impossible before.” (59:48)

• Brain Age & the Casual Revolution (33:11–34:05):
  The feature on Brain Age shows the early crossover with “non-gamers” and the dawn of “serious” games for new audiences.

• Hardware Wars: Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD (36:33–38:56):
  Predictions about format wars (“the PS3 should be able to do for the Blu-ray format what the PS2 did for the DVD…”) are hilariously over-optimistic in hindsight.

6. Reviews & "Is Kingdom Hearts II a 10/10?" (73:39–77:26)

• EGM’s Legendary Review Panel: Iconic names (Dan Shu, Crispin Boyer, Shane Bettenhausen, Jennifer Tsao, Ryan Scott, Brian Intihar) and three-column reviews are analyzed for style and impact.
  • Review Scale: “7–10 is good, 6.5–5 is fair, and 4.5–0 is bad.” (68:54)
• Kingdom Hearts II Review:
  • Brian Intihar gives it a 10/10:
    • Quote (Brian Intihar):
      “Still stand by my review. It felt like a huge step up in the creativity of the Disney worlds they chose for the sequel. And I enjoyed the expansion of the lore.” (75:18)
  • Each Disney world graded individually (spoilers abound), which the Kinda Funny hosts joke would be “reviewer suicide” today. (75:24)
  • Follow-up scores: Shane gives it a 9, Milkman a 9.5.
• Debate on 10/10 Status:
  • The team discusses (and jokes about) the “Dance Water Dance” boss fight, with chat and superchats weighing in on whether KH2 is legendary or overrated.
    • Gary the Third: “Kingdom Hearts is not a 10 out of 10 because the dance water dance fight broke me. And I’ve still never beat KH2…” (89:01)

7. Culture & Industry Contexts

• EGM’s Review "Dialogue":

  • Greg Miller: “You see the second person come in…and it’s them just going back and forth, clearly either writing in like an instant messenger or in a room recording what they were saying. It's crazy.” (11:26, 12:09)

• Ads and Industry Zeitgeist:

  • Full Sail University ad, Dead or Alive movie stills, hardware specs for top-tier gaming PCs (Dell XPS with “up to two NVIDIA GeForce 7800 GTXs—256MB VRAM!”), and debates on portable gaming design (DS Lite, PSP). (75:44, 76:02)

• Diversity and Online Gaming:

  • Early concerns over online toxicity and racism (and industry’s insufficient solutions) are highlighted as problems that “never change.” (29:27–29:55)

• Community Managers in 2006:

  • Blessing: “It’s crazy to me that this magazine, being as old as it is, that community managers were a thing. I just don’t really think about—I guess when I think community managers, I think more of like social media.” (47:59)

8. Memorable Quotes & Moments

• Dan Shu Editorial:
  “Whoever makes it the next major portable system should have a big screen like the PSP’s, touchscreen functionality like the DS, two analog sticks…” (22:28)

• Greg’s Magazine Devotion:
  “EGM was the Bible to me. That—when I actually start reading, consuming, and understanding what I’m doing, it's EGM I’m reading.” (08:31)

• Tim on Old Reviewers:
  “They were like MTV VJs… They were celebrities to me.” (11:26)

• Axe Ad Insanity:
  Blessing reads: “For an encore, he’s gonna do your girl. The Game Killers… There are people out there whose sole mission in life is to cause you to blow your cool and lose the girl.” (44:22)

• On the EGM Review Crew:
  Greg: “What a goated review crew…” (67:56)

• Magazine-Style Spoilers:
  Tim: “We would get crucified if we did this in a review… They put every single world that is in the game and gave a score for each.” (75:24)

9. Easter Eggs & Sidebars

• Rumble Roses XX Review:
  “Don’t forget the lube” as a tagline; full-on 2000s “machine gun jubblies” energy, emblematic of the cringier side of the era. (70:38)
• Crossword Puzzles & Bad Puns:
  The gang attempts a classic EGM crossword (“What was Ashley’s last name from Resident Evil 4? Graham!”) (82:50–83:10)

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Notable Timestamps

• 00:34–09:33: Magazine nostalgia and personal journeys into games journalism
• 13:49–18:15: Rumor mills, myths, and faked news in old gaming media
• 22:28–24:32: Dan Shu’s prophetic handheld wishlist/critique
• 29:55–30:08: Online racism letter and EGM’s response
• 33:11–34:05: Brain Age and “non-gamer” outreach
• 36:33–38:56: Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD debates
• 44:10–45:21: Axe/Tag ads and male gamer stereotypes
• 56:32–57:13: Quarterman rumors and what did/didn't come true
• 59:24–61:27: Too Human’s rise and fall
• 73:39–77:26: Kingdom Hearts II 10/10 review and debate

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Final Reflections

This episode is a multi-layered look at the middle 2000s, video game magazine culture, retro advertising, and the fraught but magical moment when Kingdom Hearts II landed on PS2. The hosts highlight how much—across tech, publishing, and fandom—some things change but so much remains the same: hot takes, online toxicity, and the challenge of predicting the next big thing. They also reaffirm the role that gaming magazines, particularly EGM, played in shaping both their own lives and the broader gaming landscape.

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Fans' Requests

The episode concludes with listener calls for more magazine deep-dives and collective longing (“Can we do this again?”). As Greg puts it:
"That, ladies, gentlemen, and bees, is the May 2006 issue 203 of Electronic Gaming Monthly—the number one video game magazine." (87:42)

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For those who haven’t listened: Expect playful banter, thoughtful critique, and hilarious retro surprises. For anyone who grew up on EGM, Nintendo Power, or even rented games at Blockbuster, this episode is pure time-travel—complete with all the quirks, controversies, and classic debates of mid-2000s gaming fandom.

Transcript

[Tim Gettys]

Rent or buy exit 8, the highest rated video game adaptation of all time. Wherever you watch movies, Experience hits technology with the new Pro X2 Super Strike, the fastest mouse Logitech G has ever built. Head over to Logitechg.com to grab yours and start clicking faster than the competition. If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows go to patreon.com kindafunny.

[Greg Miller]

What's up everybody? Welcome to the kind of funny games cast. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller. It of course is Tuesday, May 11th. I'm alongside Forbes 30 under 30. What? What?

[Tim Gettys]

What? It's. It's May 12th, which means yesterday was May 11th, which was Alfredo's birthday. And I didn't say happy birthday.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, man.

[Greg Miller]

Hold on. We can fix this right now. We'll fix it live right now.

[Andy Cortez]

You guys text and be like, hey, did my message send from you?

[Tim Gettys]

Be cool. Chat.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You never responded. Like, yeah, checking in.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, just checking in. I send you a whole thing.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This whole thing went through. Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Miss you, bro.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But I was.

[Tim Gettys]

I was.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, no.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He's trekking through the Andes. The signal down that.

[Andy Cortez]

That strain.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You know how 19th is with some service issues.

[Greg Miller]

Is this Alfredo Diaz?

[Tim Gettys]

This is Alfredo Diaz.

[Greg Miller]

Greg, you're live on the kinda funny gamescast. We are one day late, but Happy birthday. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, Alfredo. Happy birthday to you. Thank you.

[Tim Gettys]

Also very fitting that your contact picture is you in the Ghostbusters outfit.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Next to Ghostbuster vehicle.

[Greg Miller]

That's my car. Yeah. That's what I do. Yeah. Sorry. I did a hilarious prank here yesterday where I set all the clocks and calendars back one day. So Tim thought Today was the 11th. It was actually. It was actually yesterday.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, the. Tim forgot.

[Greg Miller]

No, no, no. I did a prank. I did a prank. No one forgot. No. Tim knew May 11, but all the I said all the calendars in the office to May 10th.

[Tim Gettys]

He sense it up. Thank you for the birthday. Miss everyone.

[Greg Miller]

We miss you, buddy. Talk to you soon. Bye. Crushed it. Fixed it for you. Under 30, aka New York Game Awards. Nominated, aka Bicep, Poppy Blessing. Eddie O. Yay Junior.

[Andy Cortez]

Good day, Greg.

[Greg Miller]

Hello. Good day to you over there. Of course it's not the white shirt that has the Dana Barrett cabinet pattern, but it's the blue shirt that it does. He is Samira's father. It's at Tim Yetes.

[Tim Gettys]

I have it in six colorways.

[Greg Miller]

Really?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

That's a really comfy, I mean fabric wise comfy shirt. I Haven't worn it. You haven't given me that side. Yeah. Why?

[Andy Cortez]

It's thin.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. It's a thick shirt.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay. But I like it.

[Greg Miller]

And touching you right now is the Hispanic heartthrob Texas street Latino heat. Clicking heads, ripping to shreds, the globetrotting head shot and rooting tootin three point shooting nitro rifle from Twitch tv. Andy Cortez.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Those Spurs.

[Greg Miller]

Go Spurs. Are they still in it?

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, yeah. Game five.

[Greg Miller]

Game five still round one or two?

[Tim Gettys]

Two.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. Game five.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Cool, cool.

[Greg Miller]

What's the. What? What? Oh, two.

[Tim Gettys]

Two.

[Greg Miller]

Wow.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Two, Two.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yesterday, Lakers got swept by the Thunder.

[Greg Miller]

Are they out now?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Out, fully out. LeBron James going like, I don't know what I'm gonna do with my career next. I don't know if this is it for me. I don't know if this is the end of the road. But number one villain of all time, what's. I'm. I'm already blanking on his name, but he's a guy that like, he's always trolling LeBron. He's always like being an with him. He's out of the playoffs and Chad will like immediately tell me who it is. He sat underneath the backboard of yesterday's game. He bought a ticket, sat underneath the backboard and Dylan Brooks just smiling at LeBron. And they're like, man, this is like at the end of the movie when you think the villain's dead and it turns out that he was alive. It was hilarious. It was awesome. It was really great.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I love that. And I love talking to all of you each and every weekday. Remember, we're kind of funny. A live talk show network full of cool content about games. Right now you're talking about the games cast, where of course we go through the biggest topics in games, whether they be reviews, previews, or just times capsules, we need to talk about. Of course we do it live. YouTube.com kindafunnygames Twitch TV, kindafunnygames, podcast services around the globe. If you are watching live, of course, go to YouTube.com kindafunnygames right now so you can super chat to be part of this very show, which you might be on the headline going, what is this show about? Oh, it's about to get good, everybody. Don't worry. Of course we couldn't do this without our Patreon producers. So thank you from the bottom of our hearts on patreon.com kindafunny Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney. The Psalm twining. For now, let's Begin with what is and forever will be topic of the show, everybody. You might have noticed the headline on this episode is. Is Kingdom Hearts 2 a 10 out of 10? You might say that's a strange headline for this, but not really because we finally had a gap in the schedule and I finally had the chance to do something I've been wanting to do for quite some time. Of course, everyone knows Greg Miller, trending gamer. I wouldn't be here without a little magazine called Electronic Gaming Monthly. Of course, last year they did a Kickstarter for the EGM Compendium, where of course they went through, collected all the stories, all the covers, all the things, definitive history, as Kevin has pulled up right now, video games, through the pages of the number one gaming magazine. It is a colossal undertaking, a colossal book. One I was quick to back and lucky enough that myself and Tim got to go right and contribute to it. So very exciting there. Of course, there's a million wonderful little things. It's gone to print now. I'm not 100% sure when we get copies, but I'm very excited to get it, especially for my legacy and history with it, which I'm sure we're about to dive into. But alongside this came the Digital Compendium. As a backer, as a person, as a whatever, that gave me access to all the EGMs that have ever existed. They have them all digitized all up there, all ready to go do, all ready to dive into. And I said, you know what would be funny? Andy Cortez one day to crack open an old EGM and dive into it. And so I, I've had that kicking around the old knocking for like nine months, but there's just been so much other stuff going on. There's always a better headline, always something

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

to go through history deep down, but

[Greg Miller]

today was the one. So I looked back at EGM203 from May 2006, and when you pitched this

[Tim Gettys]

to us last week, obviously I was very excited about it. I, similar to you, grew up with this magazine. It means so much. It's the reason I'm here today. I was like, why 2006? Like that do 96 or something, you know, like, you guys know where I'm building to here. There's no way that that was 20 years ago, but it was, Andy. We were looking back at a May from 20 years ago. Bless, man. So every single thing that we talk about today was 20 years ago. Everyone.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was, I was, you know, just having that senioritis in high school, just waiting to graduate Just being like, damn, I'm done with this place, man. 2006, I'm ready to get out of here, dude. You know what I mean?

[Andy Cortez]

Six, I was in sixth grade.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I was a junior playing Pokemon.

[Andy Cortez]

In high school, I was in Nigeria. I was. This is gonna be fun for me. Because I was Media Blackout, essentially. I was in boarding school. Yeah, I was in boarding school in Nigeria. And we did not have TVs.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

So, like, 2006, I always. I talk about this all the time. Where I left in 2005, came back to the US in 2007, and everything was different. Everybody had plastic guitars. Everybody was playing Guitar Hero. Everybody had Nintendo WWII. Everyone's watching Ben 10 in high school Musical, and I'm like, what the fuck

[Greg Miller]

happened when I was gone?

[Tim Gettys]

What is that so funny?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

So did they deliver this on your flying car?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Were video game magazines pre that time for you a thing?

[Andy Cortez]

No, they were. They were not a thing. I was young. Like, I didn't have. I didn't have the access to, like, tell my parents to give me a video game magazine, so. Not at all.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I absolutely adore that because, you know, May 2006, I have been out of school for almost one year. Like, I've been working at the Tribune almost one year, which means that I'm about to get the column that'll then give me the blog that'll then give me the job at IGN coming up in February. Slash. Well, yeah, the new year of 2007. I start March 1, I guess, technically, but I'm still on the outside of the industry here. I haven't even started writing the column for the paper yet, but.

[Tim Gettys]

But it's right there, though.

[Greg Miller]

That's right there. We're knocking on the door, right? It's gone, I think, because there's so many people chatting. Thank you all for watching live. I love the ones 20 years ago. So we're talking about the PS2 era. Oh, doctor. Like, it's so fascinating to look back at this. But then it's also like, Tim, I feel like my EGM stories are so played out of talking about it, right where it's like, again, everybody heard my story. Probably, you know, in the fourth grade, I decided I want to do this. And it was Issue A Game Pro. I have had, I should say that kicked it off. But EGM was the Bible to me. Like, that. When I actually start reading, consuming and understanding what I'm doing, it's EGM I'm reading. It's Dan Shue that I'm obsessed with. It's the fact that it's coming out of Lombard, Illinois, eventually. Oakbrook, I believe. Right. Which is suburbs. Right next to where I was showing that this was a reality to it. Me finding shoes, email and sending him stupid questions about, like, if I should. What should I take in college. And he's like, you know, journalism, if you can, minor in Japanese. And I looked at Japanese, like, that's too hard. I got a PC or a Mac. He's like, get a PC.

[Andy Cortez]

It'd be a different Greg Miller if you learn Japanese.

[Greg Miller]

I could pronounce things. It'd be amazing. You know what I mean? Tim, what's your history?

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, I also think it's. I also think my stories are fairly played out at this point because we have been talking about this for so long. But my first video game magazine ever was a Game Pro with Mortal Kombat 2 on the COVID But that was years later, after the game had come out.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And I saw it at the library and the librarian was like, hey, you keep taking this. Because it was the only video game magazine they had, though. You can just keep it. Like, no one else is ever going

[Greg Miller]

to ask for this.

[Tim Gettys]

It's okay. And so I just had this one Game Pro that I would read from games that were probably like 4 years old at that point.

[Greg Miller]

Love that.

[Tim Gettys]

It was covering Sonic 2. And I was obsessed with the pictures and all of it. Then the first video game magazine I actually own Myself was the August 98 issue of Nintendo Power, which was the debut of Pokemon in America. The COVID was bomberman 64 2.

[Greg Miller]

Sure.

[Tim Gettys]

But in it, like, deep in it, it was like, there's this new phenomenon that's about to take America by storm. And it was freaking Pokemon. So that was crazy. And then I, from then on, like, would. I didn't have the money to buy the magazines, but I would go to Blockbuster and read them every month and just stand there and look at it all. But because of that, I would also start reading the other ones. I started reading at EGM and around 1999, somewhere in there, that's when it was like, okay, if I'm going to ask for anything, I remember asking for a subscription to EGM for Christmas. And because I was like, egm's the dopeness, like, Nintendo Power. That's cute. Game Pro. Okay, cool. You have the funny faces. But adults, it wasn't so much that. It was more like there was personality to it. That felt so. I mean, it felt like what we do. It's the precursor to what we do. It's like we knew these writers. Like, we knew their personalities and their tastes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They were like MTV VJs. Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Like they were celebrities to me.

[Greg Miller]

You will get a bit of that as we go through this and read. But, like, that is 100% why GM resonated for me and why I'm the kind of writer I was at IGN,/host I am to the day. Because, like, you go through here and we're going to read the Kingdom Hearts review. Shockingly right. And you see the second person who comes in. I don't name names and stuff because it's funny how many of these people we just know very well comes in and says, man, I'm not like. Like, they're talking as if it's a podcast. One of the things I want to get to at the end is an argument about metal gear Solid 3's new controls or whatever. And it's them just going back and forth clearly, either writing in, like an instant messenger or in a room recording what they were saying. It's crazy.

[Tim Gettys]

And something very cool that we'll get to, I'm sure is the way they did reviews is kind of more similar to how we do that than any other outlet where it would be like, essentially the page would be divided in four columns, and those each had three reviews from different writers of each game, and they would give their score. Then there'd be like a combined score, and there's all the stuff. But reading those reviews there, there's not that much space because of, like, how limited the page was. So each person's review was really only like a very small paragraph and, like, maybe. Maybe a couple sentences. And oftentimes they'd feel like it was a dialogue. It's like this guy would give it a seven, this guy an eight, this guy a six. And it's like they're responding to each other through it. And I. I just remember I read every single word of every single issue forever. Because it was like I didn't care if I was interested in the game. Yeah, I was interested in this as a product.

[Greg Miller]

100%. Yeah. That was the thing, you know, getting these. And then, okay, cool. It's a month with it. And I had other bit, maybe video game magazines, but I would. I would read EGM cover to cover. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And you would get biting hot takes, like on page 52, where it says table tennis with the sub header, the house of Grand Theft Auto has gone soft.

[Tim Gettys]

Damn.

[Greg Miller]

Don't spoil that. Don't spoil the goodness.

[Tim Gettys]

Well, so one of my favorite things about EGM was there was a section called Quarterman that was like the first rumor mill.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

So they would just be like, well, here's what we've heard around the industry.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, you'll get some quarter man rumors here.

[Tim Gettys]

But what's cool is by design, they would make shit up too. And they would say that and be like, some of this is real, some of this we're just making up. And like that. It was so much fun to read.

[Greg Miller]

Do you remember off top of your head, who just put out the EGM documentary on YouTube as well?

[Tim Gettys]

Oh man, I don't. But it was an excellent watch. It was definitely covering like the OG

[Greg Miller]

ogm, which like I told you, pixels to pages. It's an hour and 16 long YouTube video from game Sack came out in December. That's a really good listen to. In terms of like watching them build up to egm.

[Tim Gettys]

I really recommend watching that. To go back to what you were just saying about Dan Shu giving you the advice of learning Japanese. Like the way the games industry, media industry was back in the early 90s, first off, it didn't exist and it was just like people trying their best. So they would go to Japan, not just TGs, like they'd go to like all the different shows because like III wasn't a thing yet. So it's like they would go to these random consumer electronic events in Japan that game developers happen to be at. They're not all at one place. And they had to come up with new technology to be able to take pictures of a screen without it getting the like, oh, filters. Because the screenshots in the magazines were not provided to them by developers, they had to go to Japan and find the games and create ways to take pictures of screenshots. Like crazy, crazy stuff.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Lowering the shutter speed and shit.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, insane it. But you should definitely check it out.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, I'm clicking through it right now because we're at the guy who figured it out in this weird ass contraption he had.

[Tim Gettys]

It was the most. Kevin.

[Greg Miller]

Right? There it is, there it is, there it is, there it is, there it is. Hold on. So one. Boom. Kevin, I'm gonna. I put a link. If you open the link already, Kevin, you need to jump to 1403 that I put in it. Yeah. So jump to 1403 here again, this is Pixels to Pixels to Pages over on Game Sack. And then look at this thing where you'd put. He put. They'd travel with this giant cardboard basically pyramid that they put in there.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh my God.

[Greg Miller]

And then they put it over the screen to eliminate glare and do all that different stuff so they could get this kind image and asset and have the sharpest pictures in the. In the game.

[Tim Gettys]

And as you can imagine, everyone around them is just like, what are you doing? Like, no, I don't, I don't like this. And they'd explain it. They'd be like, no, no, no. Like get away from our game.

[Greg Miller]

My favorite thing is he talks about it in there of he's like, oh yeah, you do this Japanese. And they'd throw up the X and get. And like I remember working at IGN and when we would be at TGS and you'd go around with a camera, people would still. They throw up this X to get in your way and cut you off from doing it or whatever. Good stuff.

[Andy Cortez]

Guys, remember the first time we went

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

to a game dev, like the showing

[Andy Cortez]

and we were like, hey, we're going

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

to record something called a party mode.

[Tim Gettys]

Let's play.

[Greg Miller]

Or let's play, let's play.

[Andy Cortez]

And they were like, what?

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. And they're like, so we're just going to play it here. And you know, that was crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And you're going to hear some weird jokes.

[Greg Miller]

It'll take us an hour and a half to set up something wrong. But do it. Kevin. Let's crack the spine on EGM 203May 2006. If you can throw it up. Of course the COVID is too human. The Xbox 360 sci fi trilogy. We finally played Microsoft's 10 years in the Making adventure and it's an entirely new breed of epic. Also inside.

[Tim Gettys]

First off, too human. The Xbox 360 Sci Fi Trilogy. Excuse my ignorance. Never played this one.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Did we get a trilogy?

[Andy Cortez]

That's a good.

[Tim Gettys]

We even get a two human.

[Greg Miller]

I don't think you got two human twos. Of course. Metacritic on to human A65. So not. Did not this, of course. Silicon Knights, a troubled studio. When we get to read a little bit from the COVID story, they talk about their wins, obviously. Eternal Darkness. They had done Twin Snakes. Then they stopped doing Nintendo stuff. They went here eventually they make that really bad X Men game and that's the end of it.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay, so 2006 was okay. That was the year that Kingdom Hearts 2 came out then.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Wow.

[Greg Miller]

I like the also inside Zelda's 20th anniversary celebration.

[Tim Gettys]

20th. That one's 40th

[Greg Miller]

gen games. Brain Age Colon. The next big thing for DS Huxley. Massive multiplayer Shooting. Next Gen Alone in the dark. And tons more. Of course, you could have bought this in the US for 5.99. Oh, my God. You get that subscription, you're getting them at a steel. And of course, Zif Davis Media. Of course Zif Davis now owns ign. How. You know, the more things change, I

[Tim Gettys]

mean, perspective on that price, right? 5.99 an issue. It was 19.99 for a year. Yeah, like, it legitimately was incredible.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, that was always the deal with subscriptions where you're gonna buy two issues of anything. Why would you do that? Just buy the subscription, be ready to go.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was just like, I wasn't comfortable asking my parents. Like, I just didn't know. Like, they're not gonna trust this, whatever this outlet is.

[Greg Miller]

They're like, what do they. What do they rate? Zelda, before I let you do this, let's go. Let me see what this is.

[Andy Cortez]

That. This came out the. This issue came out the year before Mass Effect. When you're talking about like 360 sci fi trilogy, sure, we eventually got one right, but it wasn't this one.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. What. So we. Did we ever confirm or deny a Too Human too. I don't think there ever one was right. It was the planned sequel. So no, it never happened. Due to a disastrous lawsuit with Epic Games, poor sales, and the subsequent bankruptcy of the developer, the project was canceled and not released. That's a documentary unto itself of Dennis Dayak and Silicon Knights, but we'll talk about that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's also like kind of a wild Hail Mary to call out, this is going to be a trilogy.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, those were the days.

[Tim Gettys]

Destiny though, like, that was 10 years ago.

[Greg Miller]

But I mean, Mass Effect, they did the same thing, right? And that was the. Nobody could understand it, nobody could believe granted again, like we're saying it's after this that that happens also. I want.

[Andy Cortez]

Man, I want to dig. I'm sure this video exists of like a too human comparison to Mass effect video, because 2Human didn't come out until 2008. And so mass Effect came in, stole his Thunder seemingly in 2007 before it even got a chance.

[Tim Gettys]

Damn.

[Greg Miller]

Keep that in mind too, where you're talking about. Yeah. August 2008, right? Yeah. May 2006.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

There's a fun little quote from Dennis Dyack in the article about that that I'd like to get back to, but we can scroll on in, Kevin, if you want to get going. Final fantasy 11 right there, Tim. Look at that.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, well, I mean, this is in the original Final Fantasy 11, because that was PS2. This is the 360 version. Yep. And would have been like five years later.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, man, for me, I love jumping in like the video game magazines in general, seeing what people are thinking in the time, at the time of games, they don't know. But then the ads, man, I miss.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, magazine, magazine, graph design.

[Tim Gettys]

It's crazy to like go back one Kev, like, because these were such religious experiences for me to look through so many times. It's like I remember this ad, you know.

[Greg Miller]

From the makers of Gran Turismo comes Tourist Trophy, the most realistic motorcycle simulator ever created, featuring over 35 real life and fantasy courses, customizable riding gear, and over 100 licensed sports bikes and graphics.

[Tim Gettys]

Snowmike Mike in the chat says, I made my mom sign up for the subscription to Final Fantasy 11. We had no idea what that game was.

[Greg Miller]

And Tomb Raider, Lara Croft, Tomb Raider Legend. Seeing is believing. Just right into it. The next one here, Oblivion.

[Andy Cortez]

Wow.

[Greg Miller]

Right. Just in a. Just a straight up, hey, it's Elder Scrolls for Oblivion ad here. And again, I'm still shocked that I knew nothing about Oblivion. I remember, you know, almost a year later when I started ign, Horse Armor was a joke, but I still had no reference for Oblivion.

[Tim Gettys]

And I just don't understand Skyrim, right?

[Greg Miller]

No, no, that was the first piece of dlc. They did it all off there. But as you see, a Winner of Best RPG of E3 Game Critics Award GameSpot, IGN GameSpy, Xbox Evolved Console Gold, Daily Game Games Domain. There's some choice outlets on this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oblivion is at this time the best looking game I've ever seen in my life.

[Greg Miller]

Xbox.com so many good quotes on that one. One look at Oblivion will shatter your conceptions about what is possible in a video game game Informer. Hell yeah. From there we're just the letter, you know, we're getting a nice little rundown. Your menu here, of course, very much for me. Magazine Journalism 101, right? Let's get you the menu, show you what's coming up, ease you into it, all this stuff. But what I really do appreciate is the editorial here from Dan Shue. Okay, I'm gonna read it, if you don't mind, in its entirety because it hurts. It hits. It hits home. Dan Shu says, I like the psp. It's a well designed machine. I don't like many of its games. They're not well designed for the machine. I suppose that could mean the PSP isn't all that well designed after all. Metal Gear Acid Luminesce Grand Theft Auto Liberty City Stories Many games work just fine on the platform. Splinter Cell Essentials, Me and my Katamari and almost anything that involves the combination of looking and shooting. Forget about it. The control issues of not having a second look around analog stick just are just overwhelming. You can kind of blame Sony for not designing its portable System to be 3D proof and for not accommodating the kind of games people are playing these days, but I more blame the publishers and developers who are trying to shoehorn their console sized games into something that is most certainly not a console. Game makers must embrace a platform and all of its strengths and weaknesses. The PSP isn't a first person shooter machine, so quit making first person shooters for it unless you find some ingenious control scheme that gamers can dig preached in. It plays puzzle, wait for him to get to the end it Sorry I lost myself it plays puzzle and strategy titles just fine. So how about some more of those? Parentheses okay, I know those aren't blockbuster games, but still, just look at the Nintendo ds. That system may not be sexy, but for the most part parentheses not always. Its games fit better. That's because developers are more inclined to take advantage of the touch screen rather than forcing something onto the DS and that it was never meant to Play. Final paragraph 20 years ago Dan Shue, My idol. Whoever makes it the next major portable system should have a big screen like the PSP's, touchscreen functionality like the DS, two analog sticks, two to four shoulder buttons, four face buttons, not counting start or select a microphone and wireless functionality. Yeah, this monstrosity might look a little bit like the gaming equivalent of the Homer, the Everyman's car. But hey, at least it'll work on all the games I want to play.

[Tim Gettys]

Wow, there we go. Wow, there we go.

[Greg Miller]

I reached out to Dan Shu 20 years later with his paragraph predicting everything we currently play, whether it be the Steam Machine, your Rod, Rog, Ally, etc etc I Switch. Do you want to care about be do you want to do you want to make a comment about being Nostradamus? About calling the shot? Here we are 20 years later she responded. Look at me. I'm such a sage predicting all these obvious things every gamer wants. Lol. But if people want to give me credit for the Switch, Steam deck, et cetera, I'll take it and whatever riches come with it. Sadly, the only riches here is this comment shoe. But good job out there.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, that was very well said. And it's funny Greg, because like a couple days ago On Games Daily. You asked me if I'm ever nostalgic for handhelds.

[Greg Miller]

Handheld handhelds, Right.

[Tim Gettys]

And my response was like, no. Like, because I loved them for what they were, but I always wish they were something else. And it is when the games are made for that device itself. And like he was saying the DS works so much better for that than the PSP did, where it just kept insisting to put games that it couldn't handle correctly because of their, of course, hardware decisions. And it's like, yeah, you always knew

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

there was a caveat. Yeah, you always knew that it was

[Greg Miller]

a lesser than game.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, you are getting a different version of that experience.

[Tim Gettys]

But even if it was not just a port of something, like what was the. The big game, the first big PSP game that they were pushing that it was a first person shooter. Code something.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, code A.

[Tim Gettys]

No, no. I don't remember what it was.

[Andy Cortez]

I think I know what you're talking.

[Tim Gettys]

It was like they're like, this is the killer app. This is the thing we're building to post launch. And it was like, yeah, no, the controls suck because it's not. There's no second set of that clocked

[Greg Miller]

arm claw finger coated arms.

[Andy Cortez]

That sounds right.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

But anyways, I appreciate this editorial and I should have pointed out, if you don't know, I'm throwing this around. Like everybody has the same knowledge base. Dan Shu, of course, was editor in chief of EGM at the time. I like on this page. Next editorial is the psp. The PSP and DS update. What's around the corner for the little fellas? The portable gaming machines. And it lists Monster Hunter Freedom, New Super Mario Bros, Mortal Kombat Unchained in Locoroco and nice. Mortal Kombat Unchained. That changed the world, right?

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, yeah, for sure. How far out was this from the Vita? Because as you're reading this, the Vita is what came to mind when you're talking about.

[Greg Miller]

It's a ways out. Right.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The Vita was 2011.

[Greg Miller]

11. Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

No, I was.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, you're right. We're in the new office. I'm always. We were a long way out from knowing anything about. If you.

[Andy Cortez]

If you had told me PlayStation read that editorial in designing the Vita, I

[Greg Miller]

would have believed 100%. Yeah. Yeah. But here we are.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I'll never forget. Like, I was still. I was into gaming at the time, just not as. As much as I was prior to that or. Or after that. But looking at the Vita and going like this quad core. Because I was really in. Yeah. Oled and. And I was like really into like cell phones and newest things and it was crazy. When we got the first cell phone that had dual core processing, I was like, what the hell? Like, how is this even possible? The PSP is a quad. This new Vita is a quad core. Unbelievable to even like throw out numbers like that.

[Tim Gettys]

And just one last shout here, please. New Super Mario Brothers.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, we're going to talk about it coming to ds. Yeah, I got some. I got some stuff to read.

[Tim Gettys]

Okay, cool. Just because like it's craz about how like grown inducing hearing those words are. But like this was the first 2D Mario in at that point, 13 years, something like that.

[Greg Miller]

So crazy good chunk of change from there. You're into the letter section, as you'd expect. They have a bunch of stuff talking to prisoners, which is interesting and I like that or whatever. But where I'd like to go, Kevin, is if you want to pause there,

[Andy Cortez]

they're talking to prisoners.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. What prison can or prison advice number one.

[Andy Cortez]

Right here's my situation. I am in prison in Maine and I play a minimum of 8 hours of games daily, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. The PS2 is simply a godsend here. It's the cheapest babysitter any department of Corrections could ever allow inside its walls. Recently though, I have noticed my eyes start to tear up after about 10 minutes. The eye doctor here says my eyes are okay, that it's not them. This only happens when I am playing a game, any type of game, when I just watch tv, there's never a tear. What gives? That's from Roger W. Smothers Sr. Is that a.

[Greg Miller]

Is that real letter? I mean, like, does that sound real? No. You know what I mean? Like, prison doesn't let you play games for eight hours, to my knowledge. To my knowledge of what it is. So I don't. I don't. Maybe back then, maybe it's a different kind of prison. I'm digging right now.

[Andy Cortez]

Accident, everyone. I was gonna say that's not. If I read a letter from a prisoner that the wording there just sounds very. Like just a dude. Which prisoners can be just a dude, right?

[Tim Gettys]

Dudes?

[Andy Cortez]

But yeah, there's something about that that feels a bit more nerdy. I don't know.

[Greg Miller]

I don't think they let you play that much prison in there. But I like read the response because I like the response.

[Andy Cortez]

The response is, have you tried blinking?

[Greg Miller]

That's what I feel like.

[Andy Cortez]

Have you tried blinking or better yet, cutting your 57 hour a week habit down to a more manageable 20 to 30 hours. We get paid to play games and we don't even put in those.

[Tim Gettys]

I want to read this here, the bottom letter of the month. Online racism. I've been hearing a lot about how online plays the future of video gaming. But it's not a future I want to be a part of.

[Greg Miller]

Since I've been. There's a magnifying glass on that PDF.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, I know, I know.

[Greg Miller]

You don't gotta be a.

[Tim Gettys]

It's fine. Since I've been playing online, I've encountered some of the most ignorant people on earth. Most recently I was playing Dead or Alive 4 Online and I was kicking someone's butt. But after I beat him twice, he says that I'm okay, I'll see it. Wow. Yeah, it is good.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

He's being hit with the N word,

[Tim Gettys]

but my God, there's a lot of it. This is nothing new. I hear stuff like this online all the time. I filed a complaint. But let me ask the video game industry, if this is the new generation of gaming, do I or any ethnic people want to be part of it? Experiencing things like this makes me want to give my 360 away. Online play can never be the next big revolution until this problem is fixed. And then the response is thanks for reporting back from the front lines of the idiot idiot idiocy wars AKA online gaming. Matthew, look for a game from us in your mailbox.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, that's awesome.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, they're sending you Ghost Recon Advanced War Fighter.

[Andy Cortez]

That's pretty sick. That's really sweet of them. Yeah, it's funny how some things never change. Let me tell this guy about Rainbow Six Siege playing with mics on again.

[Greg Miller]

What's interesting about going from prison advice number one to prison advice number two is the difference, right? I'm an inmate in Ohio in an Ohio prison, which means I don't have access to a computer. I'm ready to find out if there's good any adult only rated games out there yet like he has no ability to go play a game. So again, prison's different. This is an interesting segue I wasn't expecting to make though just the other week on my birthday, even though I found it later, Nicole Carpenter put up a piece in the New York Times. A virtual escape for Rikers inmates. The New York jail compact complex uses video games as part of its strategy to reduce violence with programming for good behavior. I read this the other day and was really, really impressed with it and also excited to Find you guys are nodding. Have you heard of this already?

[Tim Gettys]

No.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, you reading through it like, I'd say three fourths in hip hop. Gamers involved with making sure new games are getting to this one specific. I was like, damn, this is a really cool thing, but it's talking to the inmates about what it is, why it matters, of course, then talking to the people who are putting it in there. Riker's bought some ridiculous amount of PS5s, like they cycle games. I think it's every month, maybe it's every quarter. It's been a while, but a good read. If you want to go find a virtual escape from Riker for Rikers in

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

midfield for bad behavior, you get Super Mario Sunshine.

[Tim Gettys]

I know we can't call out literally every single thing because this will be way too long, but I do love on this letter section this, like, post office bit that they just took from the oneup.com forums.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Where they like, put out a prompt and like, get, like, fun responses. And the prompt was, if life is really an elaborate video game, what's your game called? And one of the response from link the legend 2 is people crossing fewer animals, but more idiots.

[Greg Miller]

So, yeah, we go on. It's a great magazine. We read through it. But I wanted to jump to my page 17. Kevin, do I have to add one for everything since you put a blank one in there? There it was. Yeah. 18, whatever. This fucking tag ad just, you know. Warning. Makers of tag body spray advise that wearing new wild card and playing strip blackjack can lead to severe nudity. To make it sure it doesn't lead to your own nudity, use attached invincard.

[Andy Cortez]

Tag was a body spray that somehow was worse than X. Oh, my God. That was like my first body spray when I was a freshman in high school.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Really going after the male loneliness epidemic starting at the store.

[Andy Cortez]

I forgot about tag. It smelled like toxic.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

Miller, there's no numbers.

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Is that easier? Harder than when I call it numbers then? Because they're on the page.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It's on the bottom left.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, no, no, sorry.

[Greg Miller]

I can see. Yes, I. I was thinking on, like, the web browser. Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

So yeah, yeah, we're good.

[Greg Miller]

Call out numbers.

[Andy Cortez]

You don't have to add anything.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, great.

[Tim Gettys]

Look at them. They did their April Fool's joke. I guess the year actually must have been this year, the month before this. That makes sense. April. A fake Apple game console. Here we are still doing that.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, my God. Not fooled. It was way too obvious that The I game EGM number 202 was your April Fool's Day joke. That is, until I read that Metal Gear Solid 3 Subsistence received game of the Month honors over Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter and OR Fight Night Round three.

[Andy Cortez]

I get to one Fight Night Round three though.

[Greg Miller]

That was a really good game. From there, I think the next thing to call out that I liked at least was over on page 20, the previewing brain age double spread. Here again, as they're trying to explain what this is. The latest portable gaming trend in Japan doesn't involve a single elf, plumber or dragon, but it does require some other serious nerd tendencies.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

It was cool hearing about this on Kez McDonald's Super Nintendo.

[Greg Miller]

Sure, yeah, yeah, of course. Shout out to Kez's book. Everybody go get it. But yeah, I mean, just again, I don't know what I. It's weird to look back at something that is so. At least for me, I don't know about you guys. A moment in time where Brain Age was that first. No, I shouldn't say that. It was one of my first. I can imagine. I can remember breakouts where, you know, normal people were buying ads to do the Brain Age thing every day. To go play Sudoku, to go do these things, to do the little brain teasers and to have this before the

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

New York Times puzzle.

[Greg Miller]

Multiple page spread explaining what it is. Right. And having to explain what Sudoku is. Sudden Sudoku is Count Dooku Sudoku.

[Andy Cortez]

There you go.

[Tim Gettys]

These are the editors, right? Like, that's Jen. I forget her last name. But it's cool that it's like they. There's creativity to this. You know what I mean? Of like for the spread to make it like look good. And that's another way that we got to know these people 100%.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, exactly. And have them out there. And I do know Jen.

[Tim Gettys]

Sao.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, Jennifer. So rolling on through connecting all the different stuff there more that I like this one better than drug abuse. We certainly want to believe that doing a few math problems can make our memories better and potentially stave off Alzheimer's. But when we saw diamond again, just going through and running through what this is and having fun with it. I like this a lot in terms of what it is I like. Then right after this is EGM International. What's it lead off with? GBA Mother 3 Never change. How's the paragraph? How's this story start? What the heck? Is this a fan made game? Nope, it's far better than that. In fact, despite the peanuts style graphics, Mother 3 is one of the most exciting portable role playing games of the year. And then they go through the entire article, yada yada, in the very end. They're currently releasing Mother 3 on the Japanese site using a slow stream of screenshots and music samples. Is a US release possible? It'd be a crime if it weren't. Throw them in jail.

[Andy Cortez]

Man, that's crazy.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Hitman insane ad right here.

[Greg Miller]

What do you mean? That's a great way. Audio listeners with his throat slit. Nothing. No hitman.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Just classically executed hitman. Blood money insane.

[Greg Miller]

Then what? Yeah, Alone in the Dark is this big preview we have here. Untold legends ads. More alone in the dark. I. I call that for Roger. The Splinter Cell PSP ad. There it is. Splinter Cell Essentials. One of the best games on PSP by GameSpy. Storyline spans the entire Splinter Cell series. All new exclusively designed missions for the PSP. Spy vs. Spy. Wireless multiplayer. In the perilous world of espionage, you're always on the move. Fuck yeah. You know, Look, Tim, look at this. This is one for you. This is one for you, Tim. Disc jockeying. Who will win the format battle between Blu Ray and HD dvd? Should gamers care? We pick a side.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, my God, this is so funny. Availability May 2006 for Blu Ray. March 2008 for HD DVD. Like, oh man.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

There was nothing cool than knowing, like, guys, Blu Ray has more, has more storage. And it's led up by Sony. Like, come on, we know who the

[Greg Miller]

winners they break it down, of course. Storage, availability, price, all this stuff and then which disc will rain? Blu Ray is faster and more durable. Parentheses scrape the discs with steel wool and they still play. More importantly, it has better support from games to movies to hardware. And the PlayStation 3 will serve as a Trojan horse for the format. Quote, based on the first two PlayStation systems, it's a pretty safe bet Sony will sell 20 million PS3s worldwide in the first couple of years, says Michael Pachter, industry analyst. He's still at it to this day. Web push, Morgan. With hardware numbers like that, the PS3 should be able to do for the Blu Ray format what the PS2 did for the DVD and the PSP has done for the UMD.

[Tim Gettys]

Hilarious. We saw UMD ad earlier for.

[Greg Miller]

Hold on a second. Hold on a second. Yeah, PS2 DVD. Yeah, of course, the UMD.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, the Blu Ray, right? Like, it didn't work. Blu Ray never got widely adopted fully. Like, DVD was like, it dwarfs the numbers to this day. Still, DVDs are outselling Blu Ray and up which is understandable because of how people are most people.

[Greg Miller]

What the hell is that supposed to be?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And also Blu Rays. You know, whenever you heard that like the Blu Ray players would up res the original DVDs, you're like, oh, it'll look nicer though. Like your old DVDs will look nicer. I'll never forget watching in 2008. I was living in Austin and I was hanging out at my friend Gabriel and Steve's house and we watched Hot Rod on HD dvd. Like what a place in time. And it was like everything was red. Htd.

[Tim Gettys]

All of their red versus blue, all

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

of their logos were red, the boxes were red. It was so bizarre.

[Greg Miller]

Who headed it up?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Was it Toshiba?

[Greg Miller]

Who?

[Tim Gettys]

I don't remember. I don't remember that. But even here I remember this problem where Hollywood studio support Blu Ray had Sony, which meant Columbia, MGM, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Warner Brothers. And then HG DVD had Universal, Paramount and some Warner Brothers. So it's like it was Toshiba. You couldn't get movies on your platform of choice.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You're right. Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I want to stop here because we have a lot more EGM to dive into. But before then, remember, we need you to subscribe. Just like Tim and I used to subscribe to EGM. Head over and get your Kind of Funny membership. YouTube.com Kind of Funny Games, Apple Spot. Nah, that's right. Apple, Spotify and of course patreon.com kind of funny. Get all of our stuff ad free. Get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller in a series we call Greg Way. And of course get good karma for supporting an 11 person 11 year old small business. But right now you're not using your membership benefits. So here's a word from our sponsors.

[Tim Gettys]

Look, we've all been there. You got the angle, you've got the timing, but you still lose the face off. In competitive gaming, milliseconds aren't just a stat. They're the difference between a trophy and embarrassment. And that is why the team at Logitech G just changed the game again. With the new Pro X2 Super Strike. This isn't just an upgrade. It's a total reimagining of the mouse click. It features the revolutionary hits technology. That's the haptic inductive trigger system. They ditched traditional switches for magnetic sensors. That gives you up to a 30 millisecond advantage. Think about that. You're literally clicking faster than the speed of human reaction. And the customization is insane. You can tune your actuation points across 10 levels and even adjust the haptic intensity. Whether you want a crisp, sharp snap or a hair trigger rapid fire, the Super Strike adapts to you. Stop playing fair and start playing faster. Go to Logitech G.com and enter code kindafunny25 at checkout to save 25% off Logitech G products. Just a quick note, some exclusions apply and the promo is non stackable with other offers. Grab the Super Strike today. The winning click is finally here. This episode is brought to you by Exit 8 based on the eponymous video game from kotake create, Genki Koimura's Exit 8 has taken the genre by storm and is now available to rent or buy wherever you watch movies. Certified fresh and the highest rated video game adaptation of all time on Rotten Tomatoes, Exit 8 is an audience favorite and a masterwork of the liminal horror genre. The film is being hailed as, quote, fiendishly clever and the best video game adaptation ever made. A lost man trapped in an endless subway passage sets out to find the elusive and mysterious Exit 8. His way out is to identify anomalies within the recurring corridor. The rules of his quest are simple. Do not overlook anything out of the ordinary. If you discover an anomaly, turn back immediately. If you don't proceed in the direction of Exit 8, you can watch Exit 8 now. Taking care of your mental health shouldn't be harder than taking care of your physical health. If you pull a muscle, you go see a doctor. But finding the right therapist can be frustrating. Long wait list, huge out of pocket costs, all that stuff. That's what stops a lot of people from getting the help that they need. And that's where Rula comes in. Rula makes therapy simple, affordable and fast. They work with most major insurance plans, and sessions can cost as little as 15 bucks. You answer a few quick questions about what you're looking for and they connect you with licensed, vetted therapists who actually fit your needs. Rula makes it simple to get the full scope of care you need. No time wasted navigating between platforms or offices. I've personally seen how therapy can help people in my life deal with stress, relationships, work pressure, all of it. It's not a weakness, it's a tool. And Rula makes it way easier to actually use that tool. Thousands of guys have already used Rula to finally get the care that they need. Don't keep putting it off. Go to rula.com kindafunny and get started today. That's R U L A.com kindafunny Take the first step, get connected and take control of your mental health. Rula.com kinda funny this episode's brought to you by Reddit. Yeah, how cool is that? We're being sponsored by one of my absolute favorite places on the Internet. Reddit is the app for authentic conversations about anything and everything. I'd be embarrassed of the amount of time that I spend on on Reddit every single day if I was going there for only one thing. But over the years, I've learned there's a subreddit for every single interest, question or community I could possibly be looking for. So I feel my time is justified. Every single day I check out r GamingLeaks rumors for the latest in video game news. R TV too high to make fun of people who mount their TVs too high and countless other subreddits to make me laugh, learn, or even just feel like I'm part of a community. There are subreddits for every game, genre and niche. MMOs, shooters, RPGs, speedruns, modding, lore, everything. Reddit is where all the real gamers are. Download the Reddit app and dive into R gamingleaks and Rumors for the latest gaming updates or our very own R. Kinda funny to talk games with the best friends. Download the Reddit app today.

[Greg Miller]

There's no easy way to say it. Everybody. Andy died

[Tim Gettys]

just like HD dvd.

[Greg Miller]

He was like in unison, you know, in solidarity with HD dvd, he said, I'll fall down. Let me get you a couple just super chats in here that we've been doing. All right, Bander S and super chat it said. In 2006 I was 12, obsessed with Kingdom Hearts 2, waiting for the release. I was scouring the Japanese website every day trying to find new info.

[Tim Gettys]

Holy shit, this axe ad.

[Greg Miller]

I'm sorry, Pander. I tried to give you the moment.

[Tim Gettys]

I'm so sorry. We thought tag was bad.

[Greg Miller]

Whoa, whoa.

[Tim Gettys]

Read this.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

The balladeer for an encore, he's gonna do your girl. The Game Killers There are people out there whose sole mission in life is to cause you to blow your cool and lose the girl. They are the gay killers.

[Tim Gettys]

Holy crap man.

[Greg Miller]

It doesn't matter that he might it doesn't matter that he might sleep on a futon in the back of a van. Chicks will always dig a guy who can sing. Whether he's the quintessential frontman for a college indie alternative band or the scratchy voiced crooner of the local pub. You've got to be wary of the pseudo rock star in his ripped up jeans. That he only takes off to have sex. Talk about on the fucking nose. Wow. Sure. This esoteric. Sure, his esoteric lyrics are irritating, but the Axe dry wearer keeps his cool by letting the tune play out. After she sees he's a quasi homeless ass Ben that never was, you'll be the one left singing her a sweet bedtime lullaby.

[Tim Gettys]

Holy hell.

[Andy Cortez]

All right, I'll buy some axe.

[Greg Miller]

Moving on to the next page. Timothy, this is crazy. Take this job. Community manager. This month, it's Aaron Kaufman. Aaron Kaufman. Someone Tim and I have known for years.

[Tim Gettys]

When we last worked with him, or actually two times ago, last worked with him was at Sony Santa Monica.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

And it was when Greg and I went down there to celebrate some anniversary for God of War. Must have been.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

I'm not sure it's where they announced God of War 3. I was getting an HD version or whatever, but we did the Speedruns. And it's where you kissed Corey Barlock.

[Greg Miller]

Yep.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

That was a big moment. That's the first time we really. Yeah. Only happened because of Aaron Kaufman, a young, young man here. Of course, I texted him this as well. This is maybe my favorite. Chime in on it. Right? He's like, oh, this is funny. You know, this person hooked it up, told me to dress nice. They faked my office. I didn't even have an office. I had a cube. Take this job. Community manager. Our monthly look at the jobs you want with Tim. Tips from the guy with tips from the guys who have them. And so, yeah, explain explaining what a community manager role was over there. Experience. Six years in the industry, salary range 50,000 to $70,000. A major in communications was recommended at the time.

[Tim Gettys]

But what are his tools of the trade?

[Greg Miller]

You read it to me. I'm already. I'd already paged away.

[Tim Gettys]

We got a game. Speak. If you got to walk the walk, you got to talk the talk. Poned. Flamed, Noob. Rotfl. Kaufman rattles off. My English teachers didn't teach me those words at school. And also, another tool of the trade is swag, AKA swag. Cards, games, T shirts, posters, mugs, autograph, props, you name it. And Kaufman gives it away.

[Greg Miller]

See, this was an ongoing argument, probably settled by the time you got to ignore, was it not? No. What do we call this? Swag? Or is it swag? And people would always argue if they were cool. Swag is a weed thing. I don't know what it actually does or whatever, but that's what other people say. And then swag was short for Stuff we all get. And it would be the. The gaming bag, the gaming flash drive, the whatever. Yeah, it is. I always thought I always had both ways. Well, you know.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I always thought of like the free stuff you would get as swag, like show wag and. And swag was like. You have swagger.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, you swagger. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For the stuff we all get. That's what people call that for us, huh?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Shit we all get.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah. I mean, I don't know. The shit we all get would make sense as well. Yeah. From there we can page away. Kevin, Good job.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I did want to just say I. It's crazy to me that this magazine being as old as it is that community managers were a thing like I just don't really think about. I guess when I think community managers

[Greg Miller]

I think more of like social media.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, social media, yeah.

[Andy Cortez]

What was the community manager doing in 2006?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

But it does make sense with it. They have online games and they have like people getting reported or whatever. You know.

[Tim Gettys]

The game he was on was Lord of the Rings, the Battle for Middle Earth 1 and 2 on PC. So it was the like those MMO

[Greg Miller]

RPGs kind of thing. Diving in there. We got a preview here for Hitman Blood Money. Shout out to Agent 47. Back again.

[Tim Gettys]

Also just shout out to this page layout. I don't know what's going on, but shout out to my guy Rafiki up there. You know, just.

[Greg Miller]

We're just going to sell some running banner space on the side here for Kingdom Hearts instead of giving you one big ad. Will lace it through many pages. I do like this over overheard page there. We got a Kanye west popping up. Here we go. That'd be like getting a fucking star in Super Mario Brothers and just walking at a regular pace instead of running around. When you get that star, go and kill as many mushrooms as you can. Hip hop star Kanye west on why he bragged about the number of Grammy his numerous Grammy nominations.

[Tim Gettys]

I love that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

This is just like man, celebrities know about games.

[Greg Miller]

He knows what a video game is. That's amazing. I love it. Then I like over here just as a Dead Rising fan on page 41. I guess it's right there actually. Sorry, Kev. You're seeing it in the double spread, which is beautiful. The little Dead Rising preview there. Capcom's goofball zombie brawler has come a long way since his debut last summer. Vastly improved visuals, multiple playable characters. That's Isabella rocking the poofy shirt and open ended gameplay proved that it's more than just a silly Resident Evil knockoff. It's truly zany stuff. The game's dawn of the Dead inspired setup, you're trapped in a zombie infested mall, has you attacking mobs of undead with anything at your disposable. Guns, pipes, lightsabers, groceries, and even dismembered body parts. Lost Planet 2 for good measure. Why not? Love that then? Huxley, which they mentioned on the COVID and I know nothing about. Does anybody know anything about Huxley? 200 player firefights, PC and 360 gamers teaming up. Welcome to the online role playing shooter. Huxley's bold New World of Warcraft.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Not a good name.

[Tim Gettys]

Sounds like a massive action game to me.

[Greg Miller]

Always. Okay. Huxley is a discontinued first person shooter. Published. It was. It was being developed. It wasn't. It did it at least it came out. Just came out in Korea. It only ever came out in Korea according to Wikipedia, so that would be why we've never heard of it. But interesting that they got so much time here and it was going to be somewhere they thought, but that never happened. Goodbye, Huxley.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And I got to assume, you know, the 3636 didn't do too well in Korea.

[Greg Miller]

Also true. Yeah, of course. If you want to jump. Kevin. Yeah. To page 46 we have online this month, shocker. Geometry War Kings King sucks at Robotron. Meet Scott Smith, 22, accounting student by day. Geometry Wars, Retro Evolved, Evil Genius. The rest of the time terrorizing the Xbox Live leaderboard from the number one spot. So we're just talking to somebody who's great at online games. I appreciate that, but the first question from egm, so do you snort your cocaine or smoke it or what? Talking about this person who's just fucking crushing or what is hilarious. Also like a literal transcription. Scott's answer. Well, that's pretty funny. But I mean, it's just so addicting. The game is like crack, you know, that's.

[Tim Gettys]

God, what a time. Shout out here to the what's up at one up section here.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, like this.

[Tim Gettys]

Now we're firmly made. 2006 in the Internet era, right? Like the transition, the fade out of magazines into the fade in of like the dominance of websites had already started. And one up was EGM's Internet side, right? And in so many ways, specifically from the video game perspective, like OneUp.com was what revolutionized video game podcasts. Like, they were, I want to say, the first major groups to be getting together and talking about video games on a weekly basis. That way.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, no, yeah, One up show has a big ad later on. I don't know if I actually called it out, but I'm sure we'll run into it. But yeah, you know, for me personally being such an EGM kid, I was a 1Up devotee. Like that's where my blog was. That's where I did everything like I was ride or die One up in the argument. You know, I would check IGN for news, but One up was the community. So when I started at ign, like, all right, you gotta make a blog, you gotta do all that stuff. It was a big change for me to go over there because I'd been blogging so much on one up at the time. Kevin, if you want to page to 52, we get in here, they're talking about Next Gen, how it isn't starting off as well as they'd like it to be. Right. But I like on page 52, which Andy had already called out, here it is. The table tennis preview for 360 table tennis. The House of Grand Theft Auto has gone soft. One little hot coffee scandal and boom, you're left making a ping pong game for its first next gen offering. Highly controversial publisher Rockstar is temporarily trading prostitution and carjacking for paddles and nut hugging shorts and table tennis for the Xbox 360. So why the unexpected change up? Company reps tell us that rather than creating a complex open world ala gta, the dev team which is also responsible for the Midnight Club series wanted to focus and get one thing perfect. A lofty goal for sure, but table tennis does look solid. Preview goes on. But of course a game everybody goes on to love. Table tennis.

[Tim Gettys]

So funny.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Can you go back to the prior page?

[Andy Cortez]

Kevin?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah, I just wanted to read this right here. Them talking about how, you know, next gen not going great like you mentioned earlier.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Under the section choppy graphics. No matter how good a game looks advertised and freeze frame screenshots, players will turn up their noses if the frame rate, that measure of how smoothly the game runs in motion takes a nosedive. 60 frames per second seems to be the key to consistent fluidity. But even on the mighty 360, we see dips to half of that or even less. Say, didn't the beautiful soul caliber on the Dreams cast run at 60 frames per second seven years ago?

[Andy Cortez]

Things never change.

[Tim Gettys]

Never change.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Ridiculous how much this just could be pulled from today. If you want to shoot over if page 54 has BioShock exclusive screens.

[Tim Gettys]

Exclusive screenshots in 2006.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

That's what I had to go get. I remember Dunham was always making me go get new exclusive screens, get something for the PlayStation channel. Funny to see that over here in a magazine version. And then. Yeah, I like page 56. The sales charts for January 2006, the top 10 best selling games. Number one, Call of Duty. Number two.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, dude, Call of Duty 2. Obviously Call of Duty 4, Modern Warfare set things on a completely different trajectory, but Call of Duty 2 was a massive hit that made Call of Duty a fighter in the console space. And also it was, I want to say the heaviest hitter for Xbox 360 in its first year or so. Right. Like it was the 360 game for a long time.

[Andy Cortez]

I love that on this page they t they track top 10 rentals, which is a thing I didn't know that you could track. But also I love that the number one is arena football, which is a game that like.

[Tim Gettys]

Number two. Number one. Number one.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah. Number two is arena football, which is a game that I remember playing at a friend's house and I'm pretty sure he ran rented it. But yeah, shout out smackdown versus raw 2006.

[Greg Miller]

On the top 10 overall though, Call of Duty 2, Madden NFL 06, MVP 06, NCAA Baseball, Grand Theft Auto, Liberty City stories on PSP number 5, Mario Kart DS. Number 6, Animal Crossing Wild World. Number 7, need for Speed, Most Wanted. Number 8, Dead or Alive 4. Number 9, Star Wars Battlefront 2, PS2, and number 10, Grand Theft Auto, San Andreas.

[Tim Gettys]

You know what's fucking crazy?

[Greg Miller]

Nothing changes.

[Tim Gettys]

You look at this top 10 and you're just like, change the iteration of the franchise. And dead or alive being there is a little crazy, but otherwise it's like, yeah, that's pretty much what it looks like today.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You also miss blessed under the top 10 rentals that arena football for Xbox is also number nine.

[Tim Gettys]

Wow.

[Andy Cortez]

They combine them, you know.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Platform juggernaut.

[Greg Miller]

They loved it. That was what it was all about. You know what I mean? I like the little. The little runner at the bottom. Capcom is opening a new development studio in Los Angeles. So we'll make games primarily for mobile phones. Yeah. X Men ad. Hell yeah. Then we get to what you were talking about, Tim. The latest iteration of the EGM rumor mill. Of course. Yeah. Quarterman was one thing. I think eventually they phased out water

[Tim Gettys]

even here the queue. Oh, you're right.

[Greg Miller]

But yeah, they have a bunch of goofy ones in here, right? Not even goofy, I guess, but I like the next gen. Lombax, Ratchet lands on the PlayStation 3 sometime in 2007. Like Real Shout in the dark that that was gonna happen.

[Tim Gettys]

The top right there is there saying that there's rumors of a Mario Paint coming to DS and Nintendo Revolution. Oh wow.

[Greg Miller]

Same thing for the okay, smile section. Right. Anyway, more upgrades are on the way as both the DS and PSP will receive additional redesigns by the end of the year. So what's the latest greatest feature? It seems Nintendo and Sony will add a camera to their respective portable systems and more.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh man.

[Greg Miller]

Then we got a Derek Jeter baseball mobile game loft ad.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

My favorite thing is like on the left just really tough text to read. Like hit a home run with Derek Jeter Pro Baseball 2005 and then just the word Jeter screenshots.

[Tim Gettys]

That's right. I hear Square will unveil Final Fantasy 13 at this May's big industry trade show. The Electronic Entertainment Expo known to most folks is simply E3 awesome.

[Greg Miller]

Speaking of being awesome, if you jump to page 60, the Hot 10, also known as the Hot Teen. All right, but number two on it.

[Tim Gettys]

Fuck.

[Greg Miller]

Number two, tape recorder. Sure. You can order Street Fighter Alpha 3 Max through Capcom.com and get that special D pad that permanently grafts to the PSP's semi inadequate pad. Or you can just stick some tape on a quarter and that works. Hot tip courtesy of game video.com's Ryan O'. Donnell.

[Tim Gettys]

Ryan O'.

[Greg Miller]

Donnell. It's a game videos.com games tip. I remember doing that for games when I was reviewing stuff on psp. Put the quarter on there to make sure you do. You had it the way you wanted it. I also like that number 5, pre ordering DS Lite. Don't do it. And you may wind up like these folks.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

What?

[Greg Miller]

All right. I guess that's the tip. Sure, whatever.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Just waiting in line.

[Greg Miller]

Waiting in line. It's not a big of a deal, right? You get over to page 62. You got the nice coming

[Tim Gettys]

bottom here Dead or Alive movie DOA stills from the upcoming Dead or Alive movie online. And all we can say is ha

[Greg Miller]

ha ha ha ha ha ha.

[Tim Gettys]

Breathe.

[Greg Miller]

Ha ha ha.

[Tim Gettys]

It's like, yeah, something's never changed. We see fucking Kratos and we're all like oh man.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. For the coming soon. May 2006. Paige calling out Okami. I like that for Capcom being out there. And of course, who could forget over g fighters on Xbox360 from Ubisoft. Defend freedoms in combat.

[Tim Gettys]

What is this Coming soon? Maybe should just go outside instead. Why are they nagging us?

[Greg Miller]

They're saying they're not good games.

[Tim Gettys]

That's fucking weird.

[Greg Miller]

Hey, man. They made that Okami. They. We didn't.

[Tim Gettys]

Guilty. Your judgment?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They didn't know.

[Greg Miller]

We didn't know. They didn't have the review codes yet. Right?

[Tim Gettys]

Didn't it? Isn't this the port of the gamecube? What? They fucking knew.

[Greg Miller]

Unleashed.

[Andy Cortez]

Come on.

[Greg Miller]

Great games. From here, we get into the COVID story for the one, the only two humans. As we go on, Microsoft and developer Silica Knights are forging an ambitious adventure trilogy. Will Too Human change video gaming forever? No. Definitively later. Quote We've created something that was utterly impossible before, says 2Human director Dennis Dyack on that cover story.

[Tim Gettys]

Check out page 67 so we can learn how to wrap our heads.

[Greg Miller]

And wrap your hands and your head around two Humans. Revolutionary control scheme. If you're an audio listener, your left trigger fire fires left handgun. Right trigger fires right handgun. Left stick moves Balder. Right stick melee attacks. A button jumps. Quote since we don't have platforming, the jump is here for air combat. We didn't want to feel floaty, so we spent a lot of time making sure the crap didn't feel crap. I'm sorry. The jump didn't feel crappy. Dennis Dyek. Another quote from him there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Triggers for each hand. That's crazy.

[Andy Cortez]

That's nuts.

[Greg Miller]

Fast forward to 2004. After creating GameCube hits Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid, the twin snake Silicon Knights amicably parted ways with Nintendo and dove headfirst into reimagining Too Human as a next gen property. Quote Nintendo has publicly said that it wants to make smaller, simpler games. Dyack explains. Quote Too Human is not a smaller, simpler game. Microsoft better understands the kind of games that we want to make. End quote. Nobody remembers Too Human.

[Tim Gettys]

Great ad coming up here.

[Greg Miller]

Which one do you want to stop at? The Dog.

[Tim Gettys]

Metal Saga.

[Greg Miller]

Well, Kevin went way far.

[Tim Gettys]

His bazooka's worse than him.

[Greg Miller]

Still further. Still further. Look for the Dog there. Metal Saga.

[Tim Gettys]

I don't even know that.

[Andy Cortez]

In the Metal Slug franchise, it kind

[Tim Gettys]

of looks like it, but I don't think so. That's not Atlas, right?

[Andy Cortez]

I mean, it has Atlas at the. Oh yeah. No, Atlas doesn't make it.

[Greg Miller]

Now, as we said at the Top, this is May 2006.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Just real quick, it says that approximately on Wikipedia, approximately two humans sold 700,000 units.

[Greg Miller]

Okay, remember May 2006 for the issue, August 2008 for when this game came out. They have a thing here on page 72. The tough question. Although Silicon Knights remains adamant that the first chapter of 2Human will ship this November, the company faces the stigma of several delayed past releases. That's a reputation that Dennis Dyack would like to shake. Quote. Can Silicon Knights ship a game on time? He asks. Well, Eternal Darkness actually would have made gamescast launch except for one thing that we couldn't. What I say gamescast. Sorry, gamecube launch except for one thing that we couldn't possibly anticipate, and that was 9 11. Dyak goes on to explain. Quote. We actually had to redo 25% of the levels because we had some major settings. Some major settings set in the Arab world. It was. It's not that we had done anything negative at all, but the environment just wasn't ready for it. We were very disappointed about all of this and we really got beaten by the press over that delay. But as Miyamoto san says, hit him with it. Hit him with it. People will forget that a great game was late, but they'll never forget that a game is bad at the end. I think no truer words have ever been said.

[Andy Cortez]

Wow. Some things never change.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Holy shit.

[Andy Cortez]

Holy shit.

[Greg Miller]

There's like it's a combo wombo coming in.

[Tim Gettys]

Crazy.

[Greg Miller]

Just fucking.

[Andy Cortez]

What?

[Greg Miller]

Okay.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Shit.

[Greg Miller]

God damn.

[Andy Cortez]

Like 911 didn't happen. Do you think we would be talking about two Human instead of Mass Effect?

[Greg Miller]

Damn.

[Andy Cortez]

Like holy be talking about two human. Andromeda.

[Greg Miller]

We jump to page 78 after this one. Of course we get choose your own adventure. This is where take a journey with the next hot crop of games for your handhelds. They start off with Monster Hunter Freedom.

[Tim Gettys]

Who's it written by though?

[Greg Miller]

I'm already past that page. You tell me if you want to call it out.

[Tim Gettys]

Brian Insahar.

[Greg Miller]

I hate him.

[Tim Gettys]

And Demian Lynn.

[Greg Miller]

Wow, Brian, of course, Friend of the show. You know him from Insomniac, where he's leading up all the Spider man games. He gets to come in here and hang out with us. I was gonna call him out later. I got him coming up later. But good, good catch on that one. Monster Hunter Freedom coming May 2006. Believe it or not, monster hunting requires more than the ability to slay a few dragons. You gotta be domesticated too, as the best of the best. The pros are at fishing, gardening and cooking the meals. It goes on to talk about this. It's another one crazy of like May 2006. Not when it came out out on PSP. Came out later than that because that's one of that I did a lot of coverage for you. Go from there then. Like I was talking about Timmy. You're gonna get over to your Mario thing. But you're doing something else, are you?

[Tim Gettys]

Don't Mario. I just. I want to read some of it because it's. It's wild. It's a good thing we don't judge name. Judge games based on the creativity of their names. Otherwise we'd have to give this one a big fat donut later. Aside from New Super Mario Bros. Butt stomping Pipe traveling solo adventure, the game will also come packed with a two player wireless co op mode. Princess Peach. We're a common.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, nice wild.

[Tim Gettys]

Look at these shit.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Screenshots.

[Greg Miller]

Screenshots are hilarious fun stuff.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, damn it.

[Greg Miller]

I was wrong.

[Tim Gettys]

Yes. Was incredibly hard to capture anything from. Of course you needed like these insane machines that they just would not give to anybody.

[Greg Miller]

I take back my shot at Monster Hunter Freedom. I did Monster Hunter Freedom Unite, which is the one that capitalized on this one. Sorry. So it was me too. 2006. Want to make sure I wasn't leading you all astray as we went on that one. They talk about crisis core Final Fantasy 7 over there too. Cloud's best bud, Zack takes center stage in this long awaited action rpg. Want more info? Yes. So do we.

[Tim Gettys]

Yep.

[Greg Miller]

They were. They were. They were keeping it real. You know, keeping it real out there. Pokemon Ranger. The Road to diamond and Pearl. Nintendo DS Fall 2006. Like anything we could say here, we'll stop 5 million Pokemaniacs from buying the game. Was that a good one, Tim?

[Tim Gettys]

Arranger was fine. It did not sell 5 million copies.

[Greg Miller]

They sell more or less.

[Tim Gettys]

Probably less.

[Greg Miller]

Okay. I mean, definitely less over on 84. I like this loco roko Mr. Bean thing they did here. All right, cool. Let's call this out. Throw Mr. Bean up. Have that there. All right, great.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That's how we're making memes, man.

[Greg Miller]

Exactly. And then I like this one when we get to talking about the DS light. More info for your adventures. This is page 85. It's up there. Light it up. Nintendo's dual screen handheld has gone and gotten itself a makeover. And it's looking good. In addition to being lighter and smaller, the screens stay the same size though. The DS Lite features four brightness settings. The colors really pop on the highest one and a larger stylus. And the microphone is now positioned in the middle of the unit. When we tried the DS Lite, the D pad felt better as well. What are you calling out to? What are you scrolling? No, nothing. Oh, okay. He wants to keep secrets. How's that?

[Andy Cortez]

I don't like it. I got something I need to call out, but I think it's later.

[Greg Miller]

We'll get to it. Okay.

[Andy Cortez]

Advent children on page 89.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, dude, that was insane. Like, Advent Children was like. We were obsessed with this. The concept of this thing happening, right? So it's just like any little info you'd get from. It was.

[Greg Miller]

Good thing we didn't hold our breath for the US release of Square Enix's anticipated CG flick. It's only been what, like seven months since the Japanese debut of Final Fantasy 7, advent children. Well, no more. This April 25th, you can pick up the movie, which was. Is set two years after the event of the hugely successful PS1 role playing title on both DVD and UMD.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, allegedly. I saw it earlier than that and

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I remember just feeling weird about this one because after watching Spirits Within, I'm just.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, God.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Just thinking, like, what is. Like, that was kind of a, you know, pump fake.

[Tim Gettys]

That.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

That didn't remind me anything of what the games were. So what is this gonna. Well, that's Cloud. It's gotta be about the video game.

[Tim Gettys]

Definitely. I mean, I was way more into it at this point. The Final Fantasy stuff. Like, I was very, very obsessed. Hadn't having just come off 10 and being like all in at that point. And this is when they announced Final Fantasy 7, the compilation of Final Fantasy 7. So Dirge of Cerebus, the Vincent game on PS2 and Crisis Core and Advent Children. Pretty much. There's AC, BC, CC and DC.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

From there we roll into reviews. It's funny, we're talking so much about our love of magazines. How of course the dot coms came in and got it. The letter from Damien Lynn, the former reviews editor kicks it off. Longtime EGM contributor Greg Ford's taking over review section starting this issue. We've got some big plans in the works to keep our review crew relevant in the interweb age.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, man.

[Greg Miller]

Pivot to go off. But then you get here and like, what a goated review crew. When you talk about it, of course. Shoes here. Mark McDonald, Jennifer TSA, who had. Was obsessed with luminesce. I remember. Just like me and Weezer. She won Weezer tickets. Tickets. This is like. You talk about the parasocial relationships. I know so much about Jennifer without ever meeting her. She won Weezer tickets off the radio. Listening when they were here in sf, I was always so cool. Crispin Boyer. Crispin Boyer, of course.

[Tim Gettys]

Legend.

[Greg Miller]

A legend. And like, again, I move out here, I go to work at ign. I'm always wanting to run into these people. Mary Jane Irwin had left IGN by the time I got there, but we would still go out and get drinks and party or whatever with her and Dan Adams or Dave. Adam Adams. No, doesn't matter. The old IGN crew who had gone on their own. David Adams.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

And I remember one time when she was giving me the brainhouse, she's like, yeah, I live next to Yada Yada and Crispin Boyer. And I lost my mind. It was like, time. You lived next to, like, if you're a Rolling Stones fan, you live next to Mick Jagger. I was like, what? Not as bad as when the first time I met Shoe. But that's a story for another time.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

They have a good review. Scale. I like their reviews.

[Andy Cortez]

I was gonna say, I really like this review.

[Greg Miller]

7 to 10 is good, 6.5 to 5 is fair, and 4.5 to 0 is bad. Also, it's worth calling out, of course, Brian Intihar. Of course, as I was gonna say early on, your Marvel man, your Spider man man, he was listed as news editor here. With G. Ford officially joining the squad. Brian's no longer the youngest staffer, but he'll always be our baby games editor. He's now playing Kingdom Hearts 2 mock trial with Jay Reinhold.

[Tim Gettys]

You have Shane there. Shane Benhausen, who was like the funny guy of the whole group. Like, he was always the one pushing the boundaries of like. Like talking about games, but in like, a funny way.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I always love the. Here's what they're playing right now.

[Greg Miller]

I know, right? Yeah. Shane. Of course, I still have PlayStation, I believe. But before then, him and me did a G4 thing with Cesler hosting. I'm talking about, like, baby girl. Have you ever seen that? Where. Where I have bad glasses? No. Whole house is behind you. Whole house is behind me. And a Superman. Kingdom come share. That's when I debated Shane or talked to Shane about fucking controllers. Worth calling out. Of course, Jen Frank is here, a staff reviewer. Jen is worth calling out because Jen is the one who, when I was talking about, like, join the crew or get it, Win a trip to E3 and submit your samples, she's the one who got it. And I was always like, ah. So I followed her on one up and I would like, message her like, what about this? And she'd give me little tips or whatever. I was like that. And of course, Ryan Scott, many people probably just know him as the comedy button guy now over at Xbox Game Spy, you know what I mean? Ryan Scott's got a storied history, but to see him here. Computer Gaming World's review editor plays plenty of console games too, like geeky import rhythm games about male cheer squad. That's how they wanted to introduce Ryan to the world. But yeah, then we go through and start paging through and you see top spin 2 Rumble Roses XX. You wanted to talk about.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, just because this is a game that I watched a YouTube video about not that long ago, like a few months ago as I was just doing a YouTube binge. Yeah, I. The. So it's the review, right? It starts off Rumble Roses xx. The tagline here is don't forget the lube, which is already starting off on a crazy note. But then it goes in. Good thing I review games for a living. Otherwise I don't think I could have explained to my girlfriend while playing this silicone filled grappler.

[Greg Miller]

Really?

[Andy Cortez]

How do you tell your significant other that snapping photos of these vixens or tickling them with a giant stick or adjusting the size of their machine gun jublies, jubblies is all part of the game? Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

Who wrote this one, by the way?

[Andy Cortez]

This was written. Hold on. Oh, I don't see where the writer is.

[Greg Miller]

Oh yeah. Brian, Brian, Brian in the heart.

[Andy Cortez]

I'll read the next sentence.

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, wow. Okay, we should stop reading some of this. I'm going to say that now.

[Andy Cortez]

Once you get beyond the bouncing, you'll find one legit wrestling game here. And yeah, once you get to the score is Brian in a heart, gave it a seven out of ten, calling it good. Then you get. Yeah. 6.5 from Shane, 3.5 from Jared.

[Greg Miller]

Damn. Jared was not pulling punches on that 3.5.

[Tim Gettys]

Read the good, bad and what we miss.

[Andy Cortez]

Good. Much bigger feature set than the first Rumble Roses Bad. Too many submission moves. We miss the original's mud wrestling mode.

[Tim Gettys]

Hey, I love Rumble Roses one.

[Greg Miller]

I didn't.

[Tim Gettys]

I do remember a couple years ago, Like I won't give too much information about this, but I was on some business call and it was like, hey, we're, we're bringing back a wrestling game franchise. Like I'm going to tell you about this early. Like, whatever. I just want to fill you out. And I was like, is it rubble roses?

[Greg Miller]

No, Terry

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

and call.

[Greg Miller]

This is just an information segment. A disturbing stipulation. So you think some wrestler shaving another's head after a loss is humiliate? Humiliating. Wait till you enter a Queen's match in Rumble Rose's xx. Whoever suffers a defeat in these special bouts will then have to do one of the myriad of odd and perverted acts, which range from pretending to be a kitty cat to rubbing lotion on the victor to even hopping on a pogo stick. Oh, and most of the time these acts are performed while the character wears a skimpy bikini. Disturbing indeed.

[Andy Cortez]

The screenshot is just crazy.

[Greg Miller]

It's that thing where like, you know, Machine Gun Jubilees, that's what this game, or Jubilees, that's what this game was like. It was very much about the fucking physics, if you have to catch my drift.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

How is the franchise still not around if it's that popular?

[Greg Miller]

You know what I mean? Who would have thought?

[Andy Cortez]

I didn't know about this franchise till like legitimately a few months ago

[Greg Miller]

we had a big two page spread on the Godfather. The game reviews there 8.8.5 and a 7.5 there as we bring Mafia back to the forefront.

[Tim Gettys]

So yeah, I clearly they even said this, but they're changing up how they do the reviews and it's still kind of a similar thing here. But this isn't the. The iconic EGM review.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, yeah, we had moved away from the way you're thinking of the B, the column with the number like behind it and stuff like that. Yeah, we, when they did this redesign, they had moved away from that. Tomb Raider legend is in it. 8.5, 8.5 and an 8. Not too shabby for Lara Croft's latest outing. NBA Ballers phenom gets a 6, a 6, 5 and a 7.5. And then we roll into game of the month. Wow Arts 2. Wow strap line. Oh Mickey, you're so fine. If you want to know why every one of my IGN strap lines is something like that, you look no further.

[Tim Gettys]

There you go.

[Greg Miller]

How can we be putty? What? What's the thing I can do to get in here? Brian? It's a Harley reviewer on this one gives it a 10 out of 10. Brian writes. Mickey Mouse Cloud, Simba Sephiroth. Sephiroth sounds more like a terrifying cosplay session than a winning video game combination. While the first Kingdom Hearts proved that pairing Disney with Final Fantasy wasn't completely crazy, this action role playing console sequel proves the duo has a lot of staying power. It's been almost four years since Sora and his animated pals Donald and Goofy traversed various Disney themed worlds on your PS2. In 2004, the trio also had a quick GBA pit stop in the card Filled chain of memories. But this return trip to find pals Riku and Carrie Kyrie are cliched as it may sounds, as cliche as it may sound, was definitely worth the wait. And it starts with the Disney. And he goes on and on and on and on.

[Tim Gettys]

It's kind of wild though. Go to the next page.

[Greg Miller]

Before we go that far, I'm sorry. If we're going to transition out, I did of course hit up Brian into har about this one too. Yeah, I'm like 20 years later, Kingdom Hearts 10. Is it still a 10 out of 10? Brian says still. Stand by my review. It felt like a huge step up in the creativity of the Disney worlds they chose for the sequel. And I enjoyed the expansion of the lore.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, Hell yeah. I mean, especially for the time. I get that. But go to the page with Winnie the Pooh on it.

[Greg Miller]

Winnie the Pooh.

[Tim Gettys]

We would get crucified if we did this. In a review. They put every single world that is in the game and review and they give a score for each of the worlds. Can you imagine? Oh my God.

[Greg Miller]

Spoilers, bro.

[Tim Gettys]

Can you freaking imagine? That is. That is so crazy. And Kevin, do me a favor.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

You mentioned something in the trailer. Like we got yelled at for that.

[Tim Gettys]

Can you go back up a couple pages to an exclusive Dell XPS 600 giveaway tracking guard? Yeah. The state of the art gaming system includes realistic video and gaming provided by up to two Nvidia GeForce 7800 GTXs.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Nice.

[Tim Gettys]

So not RTX.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I remember GTX.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, GTX 256 megabytes.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Nice.

[Tim Gettys]

It's a lot of vram, dude. 8 gigabytes, 667 megahertz DDR2 memory and we're talking about a 19 inch widescreen display panel.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Holy Whoa.

[Greg Miller]

That was gaming, man. You're gaming right there.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

When you had to put widescreen,

[Greg Miller]

Shane gave The Kingdom Hearts 2A9 in the Milkman. Gave it 9.5. But again, to what we were talking about earlier, about this camaraderie and feeling like you know them, Brian's review ends, right? And he goes blah, blah, blah, blah. I've now invested over 80 hours in Kingdom Hearts 2, solved both the Japanese and US versions. And I want to play it again. How. How's that for a ringing endorsement? And then Shane comes in. Man, compared to Mouseketeer, Brian's love in my review is going to sound harsh, but trust me, I'm not hating. Kingdom Hearts 2 improves on the original and see several keyways. Again, I Like the piggyback, the continuity, the talking kind of when we start off a show and pass it around of what's going on but a fun time out there but yeah them coming. I also like how they do it of like for the world you're talking about world tour. Need more info before purchasing Kingdom Heart before purchasing Kingdom Heart 2's $50 admission fee we grade on a scale from one to four mouse years the game's Disney inspired locations. You cheap master. Ah the good old days where you

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

could just seeing a full sail ad man I was just I just wanted to go there so so bad right like there's no way this exists you

[Greg Miller]

know as we keep winding through these you got Daxter hitting on the PSP. A nice one to see pop out there. A 7.5 from Greg S. A 7.5 for Kathleen. A 7 from Andrew Warpath.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Not getting great.

[Greg Miller]

Warpath did not Warpath. It's a mod world. There's a little strap line on that one. Daxter from under the Shadow. Me and my catamari on a roll to complacency. That's a good strap line. I like that one a lot. Seven. Seven and a 5.5 over there. Ryan Scott given to the 5.5. Good job Ryan. Stand out. Speak your truth.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And they were out there being game Blogan. They were playing Siphon filter on siphon

[Greg Miller]

filter Dark Mirror psp. Who shot out the lights? Damien gave it a seven, Kathleen gave it a seven and Niche gave it a six. I remember this one. I reviewed the sequel of course when I got woo.

[Tim Gettys]

Look at this next one. Splinter Cell Essentials. Rather unnecessary. Shoe gave it a two.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh my God.

[Tim Gettys]

Mark gave it a seven. Garnett gave it a six.

[Greg Miller]

Damn shoe writes Sam Fisher, super agent extraordinaire is accused of a few unpatriotic acts against his outfit. Is he working for the bad guy or is he being set up in this Tom Clancy world of political intrigue? I would give a crap if this game weren't so goddamn terrible.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Holy cow.

[Greg Miller]

Essentials is near impossible. Problem is Splinter sells a 3D is as 3D a game as they get. You have to constantly be looking up, down and all around your surroundings, searching for paths and avoiding enemy peepers. The PSP is 100% not the platform for this style of stealth action.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

His editorial post is definitely the preface

[Greg Miller]

and trying to you see the handshake here?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Trying to get people kind of like prep for like hey, here's why I'm going to give future games a bad review.

[Greg Miller]

It's official. Splinter Cell is not meant to be a portable game. I think these other review. I think these other reviews are too forgiving because Splinter sells so great to begin with. But I'm a fan of the series and I. And I think this one stinks. Oh yeah, I like the shot. It is Mark and Garnett before they even get a shot. Don't listen to these idiots. They fucking rather fucking wrong. We roll through and eventually we hit Metroid Prime Hunters on the ds. Tim?

[Tim Gettys]

Well, we also get Tetris ds, a puzzle game for the post Cold war era. I don't know if you remember Tetris ds, Greg, was this one for you. This was a very, very, very heavily Nintendo promoted title and it was all using Nintendo backgrounds like old school nes.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, okay.

[Tim Gettys]

And this was kind of a novelty back then. Now it's like you can't even imagine that because everything is pandering and going back to using like sprite work and all that stuff. But here they even have the good bad and pandering good. It's fun to relive the memories of classic puzzling bad. Only one new mode really uses the touchscreen. The pandering as the fan service goes a bit overboard. The more things change, the more they stay the same. This feels like criticisms. We have Nintendo to this day.

[Greg Miller]

Metroid Prime Hunter is getting a 7.5 from Shane and 8 from Andrew and a 7.5 from Jeremy. Good. The best 3D visuals on the DS. Bad. Repetitive level design. Reliant on the touchscreen and then promising innovation online voice chat between matches.

[Tim Gettys]

So crazy, man. What a different time.

[Greg Miller]

Did you have memories of Metroid Prime?

[Tim Gettys]

Oh, I was fairly against it. I mean again, I didn't like the handheld gaming. That and it's just like Hunters was fun and they had a good solution I think for how it worked because you were using the D pad to move and then the stylus touchscreen to aim and shoot. That was cool. It didn't feel good ever. You know, that was where we got more of the Sylux character, which, you know, everyone's favorite From Metroid Prime 4

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

made a big return.

[Greg Miller]

Never forget, that's where he was. And from there we roll into the review. Wrap up. Again. This is a magazine, so lots of times you got your build super early for the magazines, but sometimes you still didn't get them in time frame for actually getting it out. So I like seeing Elder Scrolls Oblivion here. Of course they have it. They've put dozens of hours into it and they've barely scratched the surface. They go through to make sure and make a point of that and call it out. But nice to see.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

And you read that. You're like, dang, I can't wait for next month.

[Greg Miller]

Dozens of hours. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Remember, you'd actually wait. It wouldn't just be. I mean, you could. Obviously there would be Internet coverage at this time, but still, I can't wait to see what they're up to next time around. And then we scroll through. You got the archive. You got the thing. You got Sean Baby, of course, popping in.

[Tim Gettys]

We have a. Can't you go back up to. Yeah, in the bottom middle. Mega Man Powered up, which was the PSP remake of Mega man, which would then lead to the remake of Mega Man X. Oh, Maverick Hunter.

[Greg Miller]

There you go.

[Tim Gettys]

I just love that Andy knows that name. No one else does.

[Greg Miller]

Like I said, review archive. You got a Sean Baby thing. Sean Baby is always their humor. Calm. This time it's a salute to girl gaming. Get out of my games and into my car. Of course you go through. Oh, yeah. It's not. It doesn't age well. No, but again, Sean Baby was always being. He had a mohawk. All right. You knew what he was up.

[Tim Gettys]

I know that guy.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah. Crossword. You got a grudge match between Fight Night and Fright Night. And then. Yeah, the next one is EGM retro. 20 parentheses. Really rad. Years of Zelda to take a historic stroll with Nintendo's happy little elf.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Great graphic designer.

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah, I know we're going live, but just real quick, I want to try this. Go, go up. Back a page.

[Greg Miller]

Oh, I see.

[Tim Gettys]

This is a crossword puzzle. You think we can do it? I don't think so.

[Greg Miller]

I mean, if we cancel the Kind of Funny podcast. Yeah, we could do it.

[Tim Gettys]

I mean, let's just look at it real quick and try to see, like, do we have any chance?

[Andy Cortez]

Number one across Resident Evil 4 is Ashley, President's daughter.

[Greg Miller]

What was Ashley's last name? What's the president's name?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Graham.

[Greg Miller]

Graham, right. E R A H, That.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Right. That fits. Yeah, that's.

[Greg Miller]

That's.

[Andy Cortez]

Yeah, Graham fits. Eight across two. Human subject matter.

[Greg Miller]

Sci fi.

[Andy Cortez]

No longer than that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Clones.

[Andy Cortez]

The long one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, it's a long one.

[Greg Miller]

We got to read the fucking article. 10.

[Tim Gettys]

Metal Gears. Kojima Hideo, director.

[Andy Cortez]

That's 10. That's a five letter word.

[Tim Gettys]

Number 12's Teena Musion. Ninja Turtles.

[Andy Cortez]

Shredder.

[Tim Gettys]

Right.

[Greg Miller]

Same thing for Shredder's box. Number two down is PSP Crank. Number two down is Metal Gear. It'd be Acid.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Number five down is bad guy. Pokemon Mewtwo.

[Greg Miller]

This is one for you, Andy. Number six down. Mario Sunshine Bloopers Ammo. What did Blooper shoot at you?

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Ink. Ink?

[Greg Miller]

No longer than that.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh, I thought you said six down.

[Greg Miller]

I did. You're right. No, I think you're. I want to print it out. If we're doing this, print it the fuck out. I'm not doing it.

[Tim Gettys]

Like, move on.

[Andy Cortez]

38 across. ET's last name terrestrial. That's a weird one.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I don't like.

[Greg Miller]

20 years of Zelda. Yeah, a walk through here of what they're going through. Of course. Doing everything. It's again crazy to look at this and be like just 20 years. Right? Link to the something something. Tim's already on to the next one.

[Andy Cortez]

Play that funky music, white boys.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah, Nintendo certainly had some interesting ideas about how to sell the original Zelda to American kids who had never seen anything like it. We can get behind the quote, never ending adventure Tagline. Back in 1986, Zelda really did seem a possibly huge, huge. And then, yeah, we move on to this final word thing. I like this. Metal gear solid 3 controversy never dies here at EGM. We don't fight over girdles or sports teams or cars. We fight over video games. With our recent reviews of metal gear solid 3 subsistence, last issue's Game of the month, the fierce intra office arguing flared up again. In one corner you have insane Metal Gear Solid 3 fans, Shane Bettenhausen, previews Editor, and Brian Intihar, news Editor. In the other corner, you have a more reasonable and level headed coup. Guess which side wrote this intro in. Dan Shue, Editor in chief, and Mark McDonald, executive editor, who appreciates Subsistence but don't think it's all that. It's all that, much less Game of the Month material. Here are excerpts from a recent lunchtime conversation, which you can catch up on an upcoming episode of the One Up Show.

[Tim Gettys]

Very cool.

[Greg Miller]

Going back and forth and arguing and arguing and arguing.

[Andy Cortez]

Oh, there's the answer for the I

[Greg Miller]

don't want to see it. We're playing it afterwards. Shoo. Didn't you think it was clunky though? Shane? The controls are very precise. It's complex. There are a lot of buttons. Shoe. It's not complex, it's just unnecessarily clunky. Go play Halo 2 or Splinter Cell. Shane. It's not comparable. It's more complex and not as fast, but you're in complete control. You guys make it sound like the gameplay is just shocking. Metal Gear Online is gravy to the greatest PS2 game of all time goes on.

[Tim Gettys]

Like I mean hey, that. That was the conversation back then.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Damn. Five down wasn't Mewtwo's meowth. Damn shit weird.

[Greg Miller]

You got ink though.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Six letters.

[Tim Gettys]

You got ink.

[Greg Miller]

And then I like this Next month Revolution revelation. Oh Nintendo, you big T's. You gave the world a glimpse of the most intriguing game system ever, the remote control powered Revolution last year. And then you shut up about it. Well, we're not having it. Egm. And our single minded pursuit of all things next gen has long at long last infiltrated Nintendo's distant fortress of secrecy to get an up close all access world exclusive visit with the company's next home console, the Revolution. We interviewed Nintendo's top dogs about their plans of taking back your living room with a system's simple online connectivity, lineup of revolutionary games and back catalog of downloadable classics.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I cannot imagine waiting for the next month. Like holy shit.

[Tim Gettys]

That's crazy as shit.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

We got a big one next month.

[Tim Gettys]

There's like not even the word we on this Wiimo right now. Like man, they don't know about that nunchuck.

[Greg Miller]

Those were the days. And Kevin. Yeah. If you panned to 121 there it is. One up show. We were talking about it right there. Right? Ready to go. The one up show. One UPS weekly show is taking the gaming world by storm. See what all the fuss is about. Watch the One Up show today. The One Up Show.com slot. I'm sorry one upshow.one up.com and then

[Tim Gettys]

the shoe and chan comics they'd have in every.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah and then just for the hell of it, give me the last ad. It's EA air hockey. All the action, all the fun.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Playing on a razor.

[Tim Gettys]

Motorola T720.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Oh shit.

[Greg Miller]

And that ladies gentlemen and bees is the May 2006 issue 203 of Electronic Gaming Monthly, the number one video game magazine.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Amen.

[Tim Gettys]

Hell yeah. I hope y' all loved this. I love this. I want to do this more.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

A great stroll. Yeah, the memory lane.

[Greg Miller]

Let me get some super chats in here. Of course there were a lot. It's Alex plays says breaks over. Yes. Yes. It's still a 10 out of 10. Talking about Kingdom Hearts of course. Andrew says birthday tax. Turning 27 today. Love what you guys do. We love you. Happy birthday. Samson XP says we recently did a similar episode on our on. We recently did a similar episode on our podcast Grow up. Level up. We also did EGM January 2006 and the year in preview issue. It was super fun. Can't wait to see what you guys did for the issue. It's a spoiler because we're behind, obviously. Don't steal our ideas again, please. Yeah, and I saw somebody who. Oh, Grego's Day or. Yeah, Greg owes Damon money. Damon reads Nintendo Powers. All right. It's very different. It's a very different bit. Don't worry about it. Gary the third became a member for 32 months and says Kingdom Hearts is not a 10 out of 10 because the quote dance water dance fight broke me. And I've still never beat Kingdom Hearts 2. Bad franchise for bad people heart. Also, Kingdom Hearts 3 made my wife hate Donald Duck. Legit beef.

[Tim Gettys]

Damn. Three did.

[Greg Miller]

Yeah.

[Tim Gettys]

Donald's the goat in three. You kidding me?

[Greg Miller]

AKA dot says call me and call me in Coach. Kingdom Hearts 2 is my most played game ever. That's crazy. Riley says for gave a super chat said for blessings. Okay, I'll say it. Joke. I'm dead. Feel a surge. Super chat said. I still. I still remember talking to my friend at recess about how hyped we were to pick up our Kingdom Hearts 2 pre orders after school. LOL. Street Shadow 20 says while we're looking at old magazines, who remembers Core on PS3? I was a sicko who bought every issue of Core. Oh, and the tester. LOL.

[Tim Gettys]

Hell yeah. Good for you. That's awesome. I remember.

[Greg Miller]

Remember when Core, which was the video magazine. Right? I'm not getting that wrong. Right? Okay. Remember when they accidentally leaked the PSP go?

[Tim Gettys]

Yeah.

[Greg Miller]

I was packing my bags for E3 and it was like I forget what I was looking at and you booted up. And they were just talking about the PSP go and saying, well, you know, we just revealed at E3. I had to fucking stop everything to

[Andy Cortez]

write articles and do shit about crazy chaos.

[Greg Miller]

Killer X7 says my buddy on Xbox Live with the 360 hyped me up on 2Human after we played Chrome Hounds. Said it was the next big thing he owes me. Dear Sixlet says we gotta get Andy and Bless a kid it out post game file for Kingdom Hearts 2 so they can see firsthand how much sauce Kingdom Hearts secret bosses have.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

I think Bless already played Kingdom Hearts.

[Andy Cortez]

Right? Two. Two I've played. I've played a big chunk of Kingdom Hearts 2. But yeah, for me it's hard to go back to.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Okay, gotcha.

[Greg Miller]

And then the final One is Ken Jr. Who says this was rad as hell. More of these going forward, please.

[Blessing Adeoye Jr.]

Thank you Ken.

[Greg Miller]

Maybe we will with your support. Remember, we're kinda funny. Live talk shows about video games each and every day. Starting with Kinda Funny Games daily, going into Gamescast, then maybe a podcast, like the kind of funny podcast then streaming some games. Couldn't do without your support. Pick up a membership to get everything ad free. Get your daily dose of me and get good karma. YouTube.com kindafun games, Apple, Spotify, and of course patreon.com kindafunny no bucks toss our way. No big deal. Like subscribe, share and hang out with us each and every day. If you're listening later, remember, you can catch everything on demand on podcast services. But of course. YouTube.com kindafunnygames until next time though, it's been our pleasure to serve you.